HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL WE FEATURE THE BRITISH SECRET AGENT – VIOLETTE SZABO, ALONG WITH OTHER SOE HERO’S AND HEROINES, SAS (SPECIAL AIR SERVICE) AND OTHER UK SPECIAL FORCES.

NOT FORGETTING OF COURSE OUR WW2 NAZI HOLOCAUST EXHIBITION FOR WHICH WE FEATURE AND INCLUDE MANY OF THE ABOVE WHO HAD BEEN CAPTURED, TORTURED AND SUBSEQUENTLY EXECUTED BY THE NAZI’S DURING THIS HORRIFIC PERIOD.

WE ALSO HAVE A NUMBER OF PERSONALLY SIGNED EXHIBIT ITEMS KINDLY DONATED TO THE MUSEUM AND ON DISPLAY FROM VIOLETTE SZABO’S DAUGHTER – TANIA WHO HAS CARRIED ON THE LEGACY OF HER MOTHER SINCE HER DEATH IN 1945 .

TANIA SZABO PROUDLY SHOWING HER MOTHER’S MEDALS SHE RECEIVED POSTHUMOUSLY TO ANDY JONES OF THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION AT LITTLEDEAN JAIL

BELOW ARE A FEW PICTURES TAKEN AT A RECENT GET-TOGETHER AND CATCH-UP WITH TANIA , DAUGHTER OF WW2 S.O.E. ( SPECIAL OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE ) HEROINE – VIOLETTE SZABO … PARTICULARLY SPECIAL WHEREBY SHE KINDLY BROUGHT ALONG AS A SURPRISE , HER MOTHERS GEORGE MEDAL , CROIX DE GUERRE AND THE MEDAILLE DE LA RESISTANCE FOR WHICH TANIA HAD RECEIVED POSTHUMOUSLY AS A YOUNG CHILD. A GREAT PRIVILEGE TO HAVE SEEN AND HELD SUCH A HISTORICALLY IMPORTANT PIECE OF HISTORY .

BELOW: ANDY JONES OF LITTLEDEAN JAIL WITH ACTRESS VIRGINIA McKENNA STAR OF THE FILM ” CARVE HER NAME WITH PRIDE” AT A RECENT GARDEN PARTY FUNDRAISING EVENT AT THE LITTLE STONE SHED ‘VIOLETTE SZABO MUSEUM ‘ IN WORMELOW, HEREFORDSHIRE.

TANIA SZABO AT THE UNVEILING OF THE PLAQUE COMMEMORATING HER MOTHER AND OTHER SOE MEMBERS IN 2013

TANIA SZABO’S BOOK ON HER MOTHER

1ST DAY COVER SIGNED BY WW2 SOE HEROINE ODETTE HALLOWES ALONG WITH TANIA SZABO

HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL, FOREST OF DEAN, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UK ….. WE FEATURE MANY OF THE UK’S SPECIAL FORCES INCLUDING PERSONAL TESTAMENTS TO MANY OF OUR HEROINES INCLUDING SOE VIOLETTE SZABO WHO WAS CAPTURED , TORTURED AND MURDERED BY THE NAZI’S AT RAVENSBRUCK CONCENTRATION CAMP IN 1945 (AGED 23)

Violette Szabo was born Violette Reine Elizabeth Bushell in Paris, on 26 June 1921, the second child of a French mother and an English taxi-driver father, who had met during World War I. The family moved to London, and she attended school in Brixton until the age of 14. At the start of World War II, she was working at the perfume counter of Le Bon Marché, a department store in Brixton.

Violette met Étienne Szabo, a French officer of Hungarian descent, at the Bastille Day parade in London in 1940. They married on 21 August 1940 after a whirlwind 42-day romance. Violette was 19, Étienne was 31. Shortly after the birth of their only child, Tania, Étienne died from chest wounds at the Battle of El Alamein in October 1942. He had never seen his daughter. It was Étienne’s death that made Violette, having already joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service in 1941, decide to offer her services to the British Special Operations Executive (SOE).

Below shows Violette with her husband Etienne

After an assessment for fluency in French and a series of interviews, she was inducted into SOE. She received intensive training in night and daylight navigation; escape and evasion, both Allied and German weapons, unarmed combat, demolitions, explosives, communications and cryptography. In his book “Das Reich” Max Hastings comments that Szabo was adored by the men and women of SOE both for her courage and endless infectious cockney laughter. An ankle injury during parachute training delayed her deployment until 5 April 1944, when she parachuted into German-occupied France, near Cherbourg.

Under the code name “Louise”, which also happened to be her nickname, she and SOE colleague Philippe Liewer reorganised a Resistance network that had been broken up by the Germans. She led the new group in sabotaging road and railway bridges. Her wireless reports to SOE headquarters on the local factories producing war materials for the Germans were important in establishing Allied bombing targets. She returned to England by Lysander on 30 April 1944, landing at RAF Tempsford, after an intense but successful first mission.

Second mission

She flew to the outskirts of Limoges, France on 7 June 1944 (immediately following D-Day) from RAF Tempsford. Immediately on arrival, she coordinated the activities of the local Maquis (led by Jacques Dufour) in sabotaging communication lines during German attempts to stem the Normandy landings.

She was a passenger in a car that raised the suspicions of German troops at an unexpected roadblock that had been set up to find SturmbannführerHelmut Kämpfe of the Das Reich Division, who had been captured by the local resistance.

A brief gun battle ensued. Her Maquis minders escaped unscathed in the confusion. However, Szabo was captured when she ran out of ammunition, around midday on 10 June 1944, near Salon-la-Tour. Her captors were most likely from the 1st Battalion of 3rd SS Panzer Grenadier Regiment Deutschland (Das Reich Division). In R.J. Minney’s biography she is described as putting up fierce resistance with her Sten gun, although German documents of the incident record no German injuries or casualties. A recent biography of Vera Atkins, the intelligence officer for the French section of SOE, notes that that there was a great deal of confusion about what happened to Szabo—the story was revised four times—and states that the Sten gun incident “was probably a fabrication.”

Violette Szabo was executed, aged 23, by SS firing squad on or about 5 February 1945. Her body was cremated in the camp’s crematorium.

Three other women members of the SOE were also executed at Ravensbrück: Denise Bloch, Cecily Lefort, and Lilian Rolfe. Of the SOE’s 55 female agents, thirteen were killed in action or died in Nazi concentration camps

BELOW ARE SOME BRIEF IMAGES OF AN ORIGINAL WW2 “F.A.N.Y” (FIRST AID NURSING YEOMANRY ) – WTS (WOMENS TRANSPORT SERVICES ) UNIFORM COMPLETE WITH ITS ORIGINAL WW2 ISSUE GAS MASK … AS WOULD HAVE ALSO BEEN WORN BY VIOLETTE SZABO DURING HER DUTIES PRIOR TO HAVING BEEN SECONDED TO THE SOE (SPECIAL OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE ) AS A BRITISH SECRET AGENT .

A VERY SCARCE AND HIGHLY SOUGHT AFTER HISTORIC ITEM IN ITS OWN RIGHT DISPLAYED HERE TOO IN AND AMONGST OTHER WW2 F.A.N.Y , ATS, WTS ETC ETC WOMEN IN WARTIME MOVEMENTS

BELOW AND ABOVE

World War 2 FANY ( First Aid Nursing Yeomany) uniform on mannequin displayed along with an original WW2 anti aircraft binocular gunsight on tripod now on display to the public here at the Crime Through Time Collection at Littledean jail, Gloucestershire

below… Film poster advertising “CARVE HER NAME WITH PRIDE” based on the heroine -Violette Szabo… starring Virginia McKenna and Paul Scofield

Tania Szabó is Violette’s daughter, although, as she says, she is of an age to be her mother’s grandmother by now. On her ninth birthday, in June 1951, she sailed forAustralia with her grandparents, Charles and Reine Bushell, on the £10 ticket. After college in Armidale, NSW and a stint as a psychiatric nurse in Sydney, she returned to England in the New Year of 1963. It was so very cold.

After working as a secretary, croupier, office administrator in various companies, completing a course in computing in the late 60s (cards with holes and no electronics) and spending a year in Beverley Hills studying Spanish while continuing her studies in the humanities, she returned to England and finally moved to Jersey in April 1976 where she opened her Language Studio with the help of Paul Emile Francis Holley, a friend of Violette’s. He also trained her in the recognition of German armaments and uniforms as he was a British Intelligence Officer during WWII.

Tania is an author as well as a professional multilingual translator and private tutor. The author, Avv. Mario Zacchi of Florence and author of Il Mastino Napoletano – the Italian Mastiff, the Standard and History of this amazing dog commissioned Tania to translate it. It is now lodged with the British Library. Zacchi’s writing in his native Italian immediately draws you into the mystery, fierce loyalty and funny antics of this Cerebus of dogs and it was a sheer delight for Tania to translate into English bringing his love and erudition of this remarkable breed to an anglophone readership.

On 29 April 2009, Paul Holley, the Intelligence officer, who had trained Violette in German armaments and uniforms, and was Tania’s friend and mentor, died one month into his 90th year. She continues to miss his friendship and invaluable support. She has closed her Language Studio and now retired could no longer afford to live in Jersey and now lives in a lovely 17th century cottage just outside Builth Wells in Wales. She is still sorting out all the books and archives before completing her paperback version of Young Brave and Beautiful and getting back down to writing Etienne’s amazing life’s story.

Violette’s only daughter Tania Szabo pictured at her home in Jersey i 2007

HERE AT THE CRIME THROUGH TIME COLLECTION , LITTLEDEAN JAIL, FOREST OF DEAN, GLOUCESTERSHIRE, UK …….. WE TOUCH UPON THE MANY INEXTRICABLE CONNECTIONS BETWEEN THE REAL JAMES BOND 007 , THE UK SPECIAL FORCES AND THE SOE ( SPECIAL OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE ) AMONGST OTHERS

YOU WILL HOPEFULLY ENJOY OUR COLLECTIONS AND DISPLAYS WHICH INCLUDES SIGNED PHOTOGRAPHS OF A GREAT MANY JAMES BOND 007 MOVIE STARS , THE BOND GIRLS , ACTION MAN FIGURES ETC ETC , WHICH ARE ALL ON DISPLAY TOO IN AMONGST ALL THE HISTORICAL EXHIBITS AND EDUCATIONAL INSIGHTS INTO THE UK’S SPECIAL FORCES .

POLITE WARNING

PLEASE DO BE AWARE THAT THERE ARE A NUMBER OF GRAPHIC AND EXPLICIT ILLUSTRATIVE EXHIBITS AND FEATURES TOO IN AMONGST THESE DISPLAYS

Captain Peter Mason is a former member of the post-war SASBaker Team who were issued a licence to kill by the British government.

Mason was involved in the mission to seek out and ‘remove’ Nazi Special Forces who had followed out orders to execute captured British forces during the Second World War.[1]

His experiences and knowledge of the spy world was influential in the creation of the fictitious spy James Bond. Creator Ian Fleming was a friend of Mason and would consult him on the gadgets and methods used during the period. Gadgets used by Mason are part of a display at the Combined Military Services Museum in Maldon, Essex. The items on show were all used by spies of all sides during the Cold War period of the 1950s and ’60s.

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This excellent documentary footage posted below does advance the realization that what Royal Navy Commander Ian Fleming wrote about in his James Bond, secret agent 007 novels was indeed, REAL.

However, to do this, it advances the false premise that Fleming had to look at other men for his inspiration when the truth is that HE WAS A SPY, A COMMANDO as well as an intelligence operative. Fleming worked for MI6 BEFORE WW2 when working for Reuters (owned by MI6) and after WW2 as head of Kelmsley Newspaper’s Foreign Department under the cover as a journalist. During WW2, Fleming went on several missions as either a spy or as a Commando while the 2IC of Naval Intelligence. He participated in the Royal Navy Reserves until at least 1951. Who does that sound like?

James Bond.

Ian Fleming was James Bond.

James Bond is REAL.

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as reported in the Sunday Times

The Sunday Times, London, Dec. 28, 1997

British Hit Squad ‘executed’ Nazis

by Nicholas Hellen, Media Correspondent

BRITISH SOLDIERS WERE secretly assigned to hunt and kill Nazi criminals after the second world war, according to a member of a special unit who claims he personally executed 16 Germans.

Peter Mason, 73, has described how he was recruited in May 1945 to avenge the deaths of Special Operations Executive (SOE) spies murdered in concentration camps and SAS men shot by the SS as saboteurs. The mission was intended to punish war criminals not prominent enough to face justice at Nuremberg and other trials conducted by the allies at the end of the war.

In the euphoria after VE day, the British Government was reluctant to rake over some of the war’s goriest episodes publicly. Disclosure of the Hunter-killer units would have undermined the legitimacy ensured by the war trials. The capture of German military records in Strasbourg, however made secret revenge possible on men who might otherwise have vanished. Mason, who led the unit killing Nazis until 1948, initially mounted his covert sorties from a converted stable block in the Black Forest village of Wildbad near Stuttgart, under Major Eric Barkworth, of 2 SAS, who sent him regular instructions by dispatch rider.

Independent historical research has already shown that Barkworth oversaw a separate less sensitive mission to arrest German war criminals from a base at Gaggenau, near Wildbad. Mason claims his activities were funded secretly by the War Office and were approved by Churchill. There was a hiatus of several months after the election of the Labour government before the unit’s activities resumed.

Mason said last week, that the unit’s preferred method was to collect the Nazis from prison camps, on the pretext that they were required to give evidence at Nuremberg. He and his fellow soldiers would check their identities and confront them with a file listing their atrocities before executing them. He said: “All the SS were tattooed with their number.Some used battery acid to try and burn it off and conceal themselves. If you saw a big scar, you knew who they were. They would fold up when they were shown the evidence.”

Mason and his comrades, Nobby Clark and Josef Galinsky, killed their targets using German guns, including the Walther P381 pistol and the Luger P08, to make it appear that they had committed suicide. Alternatively Mason would claim that they had been shot attempting to escape.

The Germans’ bodies were bundled into a hidden compartment in a Czech-built vehicle and dumped at a British camp. The unit was armed with Colt 45 pistols, M1 carbines and Thompson sub machineguns. Mason, a firearms expert, met Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, in 1959 and inspired him to equip the fictional spy with silenced weapons. Fleming later sent Mason a minature dagger as a token of appreciation.

The most notorious victim of the SAS unit was Otto Ortegies, a Hitler Youth leader, who was suspected of killing two British secret agents: He is said have castrated them and left them to bleed to death from telegraph poles. Mason and his fellow soldiers traced Ortgies to a Munich hotel room and led him out to be shot.

The story of the revenge mission is to be told in Master Spies, to be screened on Discovery Channel on January 11.

Mason, who once escorted Anthony Blunt, the traitor to Germany to retrieve letters by the Duke of Windsor will disclose further exploits in a book to be published this summer by Phillips Publicationstions, of New Jersey. Jim Phillips, owner of the publishing company, claims he has documents that authenicate Mason’s story. One water damaged sheet of paper is dated May 8,1945, and starnped with the marks 2 SAS and the initials AG3 V W.

Mason, who wishes to keep secret his address in North America, maintains he has no regrets about his role as assassin. “I am proud of what I did,” he said.

Sunday Times 28 December 1997

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WHEN REALITY BECOMES A TIMELESS FICTION – IAN FLEMMING AUTHOR OF THE GREAT MANY JAMES BOND 007 BOOKS WHICH HAVE SUBSEQUENTLY BECOME ICONIC FILMS